Immigrant Question - Research Paper Example

Immigrant question as a consequence of natural resource depletion and human resource exploitation. Introduction United s of America is a nation founded by people whose forefathers were immigrants to this fertile land. Initially immigration was prompted by search for gold and other natural resources and hence turned into colonization of the newly found lands. Keeping aside the memories of colonization and ethnic cleansing that followed those immigrations, United States can be rightly called as a nation formed by the destiny of immigrants from Europe and far off lands. But at present, a new category of immigrants have been entering this land and finding themselves in situations equal to slavery and exploitation. These are the immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America, the less powerful continents of the world, in terms of finance and geopolitics. These immigrant laborers are paid very low wages and have been reported to become victims of human rights violations many times, in USA. The companies who employ them have also been accused of being insensitive to environmental concerns as much as they are to humanitarian concerns. This study is an attempt to find the root causes of the immigration problem by linking these two aspects based on a paradigm of sustainable development. Especially, the immigrants from South America have been employed in huge numbers by the multi-national companies which have ventured into mining, farming and railroad industry in USA (Sheppard and Barnes, 294). What is the factor that made people from the developing world of South America to immigrate to USA (even illegally) facing risks even to their lives and why do they opt for the lower paid jobs and discriminatory existence in an alien land, is the primary question that has to be addressed in this regard. The one and only logical answer to this question is that they had been deprived of their livelihoods in their native lands. And the cause of this phenomenon easily connects back to the intervention of the US capital in these countries, as will be made clear in the following part of this study. The companies who employ the immigrant workers in USA have a notorious history of exploiting nature and human resources (Cooke, 52). This study has as its justification, the premise that all those who have tried to understand the immigrant question have only drawn data related to the humanitarian angle. The immigrant question has been addressed only after the immigrants have crossed the borders. But this study will be an attempt to find out whether the immigration question could be understood in a deeper way by exploring its political aspects not only human resource-wise, but nature-wise as well. The enquiry will try to understand the conditions which prompted the immigrants to leave their mother land. Thus, this enquiry will link the question of human rights to a wider canvas of sustainable livelihood. The assumption of this study is that the very same capitalist system that has created a situation in the mother land of immigrants, which forced them to immigrate has been instrumental in exploiting them once again as they reached the US as immigrant laborers. And it is also assumed that the environmental destruction that the capitalist hegemony brought in, in their native countries, was instrumental in destroying the sustainable livelihood of the immigrant laborers. It is expected that such an approach can throw light into the less explored aspects of this issue and will prove the inter-connectedness of a human issue to the political and environmental issues that surrounds it. Thus this enquiry will be putting forth answers which address the issue of immigrant laborers in a more comprehensive way. Statement of the Problem It was as early as in 1800s that immigration of Black people started to US (Perl,6). This was not voluntary in its nature but rather forced migration by plantation owners in order to get cheap labor for their farms (Purcell, 3). The injustices and sufferings that these black laborers faced at the hands of their white owners are history and are beyond the purview of this study. But one or two instances that prove the characteristics of that period could be elicited here to show that a precedence of exploitation was set, even as the nation began to become a concretized entity. Buell has described the experience of Japanese workers who came to work in American farms and said that they had complained of being picked up by farmers “like slaves in a slave market” (Findeis, 175). Slavery being abolished decades back, the mindset lingers somewhere. Symcox and Sullivan have described the plantation economy of America as “creating an inexhaustible demand for African slaves” (33). The “individual colonists were granted the right to dominate the Indians and exploit their labor” (Symcox and Sullivan, 19). The exploitation of natural resources, the major reason why Europeans came to the American continents, has been going on simultaneously and continues till date (Purcell, 3). It was by mid 18th century that Europeans started to include sugar in their food and finding new lands to establish sugar and also tobacco, cocoa and cotton plantations was an economic need which was prompted by the growing demand for these produces (Symcox and Sullivan, 102). America was the ideal place for such plantations and this factor created a huge demand for African slaves to be shipped in (Symcox and Sullivan, 102). In a certain juncture in history, the plantation owners were replaced by big companies and MNCs who have been more aggressive in their exploitation of natural resources as well as human resource (Sheppard and Barnes, 294). Until the slavery was abolished in 1808, it was only the imported slaves who stood at the receiving end of this exploitation, but now the victims are different (Howard-Hassmann and Lombardo, 64). In the19th century, the percentage of labor force working in agricultural sector was 73.6% while in 1980s, the percentage had come down to 2.7% only (Simon, 29). What happened to the agricultural lands they owned and cultivated is a question which is will throw light into the connection between the decline of agriculture and the rise of big industries (Simon, 29). And the process of exploitation is more sophisticated now that it is somewhat hidden from our direct sight. A majority of such companies have been mining, railroading, forestry and farming companies who exploit and deplete natural resources indiscriminately. It is in continuation with this lack of concern for nature that they have exploited the immigrant laborers as well. All this is part of a corporate policy which is never concerned about the society or nature. In the era of globalization, human rights awareness and environmental awareness has been growing. But it is a contradiction that this exploitation of nature and humans continue. This corporate model has evolved into an ideology that has started to place itself as the ideology of globalization. So this study will prove that this corporate culture has no moral right to exist and it should be addressed in a wider canvas than being viewed simply as an immigrant problem alone. Purpose of the study Purpose of this study is to establish a correlation between the unethical exploitation of nature and human beings as undertaken by the big companies and MNCs of USA, as part of their aggressive race to amass wealth. The aim of this study also is to link this phenomenon to the ongoing globalization process which has in reality become the globalization of exploitation of the poor by the rich and the globalization of destruction of the environment. It is argued that the exploitation of nature and humans went hand in hand with the process of establishment of big companies and multinational corporations in USA. And that these two phenomena are based on one common ideology, the ideology of greed and profit, with no respect for human rights or nature. Review of Literature The multinational companies and big corporate houses in America have been accused of keeping very low labor welfare standards when it comes to immigrant laborers (Findeis, 38). Also these companies have a habit of following the colonizer’s approach towards land and natural resources. From 18th century onwards and till mid 19th century, “a large proportion of the major agricultural exports in world trade were produced (in America) by enslave Africans” (Feagin, 51). In those early periods, the contradiction and conflict were between the “Indians (who) had no concept of owning land and the Europeans (who) could not understand any form of using land except settled agriculture (Purcell, 7). When the newcomers from Europe replaced the Indians, the nomadic life of Indians was replaced as well by settled agriculture and then, plantations. These “privately owned plantations” were supported from outside with “capital investments of foreigners from the West Indies and England” (Lyles and Lyles, 51). As the nation grew, slowly, the a part of the focus shifted from agriculture to other business and commercial ventures. The Southern part of America developed as a farming belt with the help of slave labour (Lyles and Lyles, 55). Simultaneously, the Northern part saw the mushrooming of factories (Lyles and Lyles, 55-58). The shift from “home production to factory production… was inevitable due to the centralization of merchant capital” (Lyles and Lyles, 38). It was the one time small merchants who turned into big capitalists (Lyles and Lyles, 38). Slowly, US business houses also started moving into neighboring nations in search of more resources and cheap labor. It was the backlash that agriculture suffered under the influence of this phenomenon that created the first set of 20th century immigrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa to USA. For example, multi-national banana companies like Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte had “shifted their banana plantations to the Caribbean” and this resulted in small scale farmers there being swallowed up by these giants (Blouet and Blouet, 273). Corporatization of agriculture was moving ahead fast and no alternatives were provided to those who lost their farmlands and livelihoods. This can be considered as a two-faced process. First, the US companies established their industries in the poor South American countries, exploiting the labor and natural resources there. What followed the invasion of US companies into South America was “political instability, social conflict, low living standards, and distorted infrastructure patterns” as described by Blouet and Blouet (273). Secondly, the US companies operating inside US, also added their share to this natural and human catastrophe by polluting the environment inside the US and influencing the government to let them bring in laborers from South America to work for them at very low wages. Along with this, inside the nation also, “rural farmers and local residents were forced off the land” (Lyles and Lyles, 235). Thus the US companies were polluting the environment in poorer countries, sabotaging their agrarian economy by establishing monopolies there, thus forcing the native people to become agricultural refugees, and also exploiting them once again at home. Thus the immigration problem has a less discussed and revealed aspect, which made it evident that almost all the immigrant laborers to US were agricultural refugees from their native countries. For example, the case of Mexicans who flooded USA as both legal and illegal immigrants can be examined. It is the “poor Mexican farmers who have struggled to produce crops for self-sufficiency in stony mountain soil (who) are anxious to seek this kind of employment” that they get in the US farming and multinational companies (Perl, 15). The immigration was facilitated by treaties like, the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement increased the import of food grains to Mexico from USA and thereby had a negative impact on the agrarian sector there, thereby creating a more conducive atmosphere for immigration. It was in the time of World War 1 and 2 that United States had “recruited Hispanic immigrants to fill jobs on the home front while US citizens went to war” (Perl, 9). It has been an established fact that those immigrants “who come from Latin America earn the lowest wages” in US (Edmonston, 7). The North American Free Trade Association and the Central American Free Trade Association signed by Latin American countries and US have been notorious for the provisions they had for bringing migrant laborers to USA and exploiting them (Blouet and Blouet, 273). But whenever there was an economic meltdown, like the great depression of 1930, all the immigrants were deported back to their native lands (Perl, 9). This phenomenon shows clearly that America’s relation to the immigrants is simply a marriage of convenience. Another aspect of the issue is the role of multinational companies in destroying the environment of other developing countries where the environmental regulations are relaxed so as to invite foreign investment and employment (Mclntyre, 50). The multinationals have been stationing their polluting industries in such places so that they do not have to comply with the stringent environmental regulations that exist in their native, developed countries (Mclntyre, 50). It has been found out in many studies conducted by UNEP, Rasiah and Korten, that lot of “dirty industries” have been relocated to the developing countries from the developed countries in this way (as cited in Mclntyre, 50). For example, US multinational companies had shifted many “hazardous industries to Mexico” (UNEP cited by Mclntyre, 50). Rasiah (cited by Mclntyre, 50) has drawn attention to the fact that MNCs transported their “inferior machinery” to Malaysia as the country’s environment regulation regime was too ineffective to question that. This is why Korten (cited by Mclntyre, 50) has observed that “economic globalization has greatly expanded the opportunities for the rich to pass their environmental burdens to the poor by exporting both wastes and pollution factories.” Between the years, “1918 and 1948, USA alone consumed more minerals than had the rest of the world in recorded history” (Sheppard and Barnes, 294). US were thus becoming the super-consuming giant who had set out on a new colonizing venture to satisfy its appetite, though in a more sophisticated manner. As far as natural resource exploitation was concerned, there were two distinct models to be traced out in US history, namely, the “entrepreneurial model” and the “plantation model” (cited by Sheppard and Barnes, 294). In the entrepreneurial model, the “miners, fishers and loggers” can be included while, in the plantation model, mainly the MNCs were at the leading end (cited by Sheppard and Barnes, 294). Gradually, the entrepreneurial model weakened and the plantation model flourished to become the most prominent and typical characteristic of US economy (cited by Sheppard and Barnes, 294). With that the local flavor of industries was totally lost and the concern for local development also disappeared. The MNCs that emerged out of this social ambience, have been assessed by developmental theorists as “bearers of neoimperialism, the agents through which the developing countries were exploited for the benefit of the richest nations” and which “were at the core of the capitalist system” (Bair and Ramsay, 44). Farm workers have been entering USA illegally from Mexico and in “the late 1980s”, USA was forced to give legal status to “about 1.2 million previously illegal workers” (Findeis, 38). This figure shows to what extent the agricultural human resources have been eroding from developing countries like Mexico in order to help the big plantations in US to flourish. During the 1990s, there was a great increase in the flow of such farm laborers to USA (Findeis, 38). Though mechanization in agriculture was spreading, “hand was required in fruit and vegetable production to obtain high quality products for the supermarkets” (Findeis, 38). One kind of agriculture was thus being replaced by another. The small and marginal farmers who cultivated their lands in Latin American countries and led somewhat a self-sufficient life were deprived of their land and the market for their produces. Sometimes the land was grabbed from them directly by the companies. Hence they had to migrate to US to find work. In their place, big companies and MNCs took over as the new agriculture leaders. These companies employed the same immigrant farmers as laborers and minted profit at the cost of their labor. With that, farming in USA had totally been transformed into a corporate activity from a rural livelihood. At the same time, the farm laborers were never provided with the basic amenities required for a decent living. For example, “subsidized state and federal housing units are generally unavailable to farm worker families who cannot prove the legal status of all family members” (Findeis, 38). It has been also observed that if the families of such laborers were “split between the USA and another country (eg. Mexico), obtaining useful health insurance coverage and covering hospital and medical expenses are also major problems” (Findeis, 38). To hire laborers from US was going to be a costly affair for the companies as the citizens of US had many strong civil rights. But in the case of a laborer who had illegally entered a nation, it was not possible for him/her to go to the enforcing agencies to get what is his/her right as a human being. This was a convenience for the companies who employed them. No monitoring mechanism existed to protect them from the exploitation of the companies. They were non-existent as far as the law of US was concerned. So it becomes clear that the immigration issue has deeper roots than those can be seen from a human rights and labor angle. The erosion of human resources that occur in the parent countries of immigrant laborers will inevitably be destroying the agricultural economy of those nations primarily. All the same the big companies and MNCs who employ the migrant laborers go on amassing wealth. And the laborers are left in very wretched condition. It is standing above this history of continuous exploitation of others’ resources that the anti-immigrant lobby in US is heard to declare that “American resources should be reserved for tax-paying citizens” (Byrsk, 29). The irony of such a situation is not a singular case, rather it is the irony inherent in capitalist production and globalization, as it would be shown in the following paragraphs. The reforms brought about in 1986 and 1990 in USA were supposed to have controlled illegal migration which was but not to happen owing to many socio-economic reasons (Robinson, 274). Researchers have alleged that “the objective (of these new legislations) was to generate the conditions most propitious to the superexploitation of this labor” (Robinson, 274). The immigrants lived a miserable life and worked in American factories for a meager salary and under very dangerous working conditions. To cite an example, in Swift & Company, which is a meatpacking plant in Greely, with an annual income of $100 billion dollars, “one in every eight slaughter house employees suffered a severe injury or illness in (one single year) 2005” (Perl,5). It has to be remembered that meatpacking industry is the largest agricultural sector in US (Perl, 5). In 2006, 1282 meatpacking workers were arrested from 6 meatpacking companies owned by Swift & Company for illegally entering the country and working there (Perl, 6). All of them were of either Hispanic or Asian or African origin (Perl, 6). Families were torn in between as the illegal immigrants were transported back to their countries, causing the separation of parents who had no American citizenship from their children who were born in US and were American citizens (Perl, 6). The National Agricultural Workers Survey conducted in 1989 had shown that “42% of the farm workers in US were single” (Findeis, 17). This emphasizes a social condition in which even the basic human needs of these laborers have been neglected. It has been observed that “the new transnational migration helps capital to dispose with the need to pay for the reproduction of labor power” (Robinson, 274). The thriving sweat shop labor in “New York, Los Angeles and other US cities using child, undocumented and sometimes slave immigrant labor” are yet another face of this exploitation (Robinson, 274). The bad affect on health of the laborers and the air pollution caused by such factories, has also been a matter of concern (Colwell, 136). Here the approach towards employees and natural resources is that of the same nature, namely, sheer exploitation. The fact is that the transnational capital can easily make use of the labor of immigrant workers who have “no legal rights and face language barriers and a hostile cultural and ideological environment” (Robinson, 274). Out of the 22,000 registered textile contractors in the US, above 50 percent are “paid less than the minimum wage, failed to pay overtime, or violated US labor laws” (Robinson, 274). In the year 2003, “New York State’s Department of labor conducted 1321 investigations of apparel facotires and found that 526 shops, or 40 percent were in violation of wage laws-paying below minimum wages or failing to pay overtime” (Perl, 25). The other aspect of these companies has been their attitude towards the environment, as they have been causing water pollution in a serious way (UNIDO, 95). For example, the industrial water pollution caused by textile industry in Lesotho, and the “12 million litres of water per day” consumption has been a very serious issue (UNIDO, 95). There is serious water shortage and contamination in Lesotho now. Other causes of pollution in the country has been “agricultural run-off, urban streets, (and) large scale destruction of wetlands, floodplanes, coastlines” (Cullingworth and Caves, 339). Pollution had made Harlford, the Capital of Connecticut, the worst polluted city in America and the polluters no doubt have been again, the industries around (Cullingworth and Caves, 400). This violation of the environment was well acknowledged yet unresolved as industries like “agriculture, construction, forestry, meatpacking, shipping” etc. had powerful links to the central government (Cullingworth and Caves, 339). The case of Maquiladoras was a typical example of the topic that is being discussed here. The US factories in Maquiladoras, a special free trade zone in US-Mexican border region, have been notorious for polluting the area like anything (Nader, 7). It has been recorded that “in Borwnswille, …..a maquiladora town, babies are being born without brains,….(caused) ….by an exposure of pregnant women to certain toxic chemicals dumped in streams and on the ground” (Nader, 7). Another instance of criminal negligence of the environment by the US companies in Mexico can be seen in the act of dumping “xylene, an industrial solvent, at levels upto 50,000 times what is allowed in the United States” (Nader, 7). Again, another example is certain companies dumping “methylene chloride at levels up to 215,000 times the US standard” (Nader, 7). Moreover, when a random check was conducted in 1993, “twelve US owned maquila showed that” none of them were complying with the Mexican environmental laws (Nader, 7). And the maquiladoras “were unaccountable for 95 percent of the waste they generated between 1969 and 1989 (Nader, 8). As this polluting spree went on, on one side, on the other side, “low wages…and the lack of workplace safety regulations” have been the fate of the laborers who were employed by these industries (Nader, 174). Nader (12) has aptly called this situation as “reckless exploitation of people and environments.” Thus both the sides of this exploitation fits into a schemata which is fashionably named, globalization. Parrenas has drawn attention particularly to the women as a category of migrant laborers, who have mostly become nannies and house maids in US (106). Many studies have come out describing the fate of these women and the problems that their migration causes in their families and especially to their children who remain back in their native places (Parrenas). Parrenas has called these women, servants of globalization and has thereby revealed an aspect of globalization which is so profit-oriented that it does not even mind sabotaging the social security of the people who are carried away by it to distant shores. Again, these women might have been playing a major role in the agrarian economy of their native countries and their departure is bound to make an impact on the rural economy as well. Tangential angles similar to this also have to be incorporated into the study of the immigrant problem in the backdrop of sustainable development. Brysk has studied the impact of globalization on the rights of immigrant laborers, and has concluded that when in certain job categories, immigrant laborers become the majority, those jobs are given a title of ‘immigrant jobs’ and a discriminatory labor division has thus evolved (23). This division is culturally reinforced as well (Brysk, 23). Another alarming phenomenon is that the concept of citizenship is undergoing a re-alignment in US and has become simply antonymic with the notion of ‘alien’, the immigrant worker (Brysk, 27). The terminology of ‘criminal aliens’ and ‘illegal aliens’ have been in use in the public discourses for a while, in US (Brysk, 29). All these are indications of a globalized society in which only the economically powerful have a right to exist and human rights as well, and their right over their land and resources are also nullified. Globalization has been the vast canvas in which transnational migration became a common phenomenon. The risk involved in transnational migration has been that “undocumented laborers vulnerable to abuse” have been sent to and fro between nations and no system exists to ensure accountability for them (Brysk, 2). Figures have shown that “hundreds of Mexican nationals die each year crossing the US border” (Brysk, 2). Prostitution, child and women trafficking, and even forced labor have also been the consequences of this migration (Brysk, 2). Even in transnational migration of capital as part of globalization, it has been proved that MNCs reinforce “state coercion and labor suppression” (Brysk, 5). Thus the whole issue of immigration is connected very much to the ideological premises of globalization whereby the issue becomes loaded with financial vested interests and hence irresolvable. Research Questions This research will try to find out 1) What has been the approach of the big companies and multinational corporations of the US towards nature and agriculture? 2) What has been the approach of the big companies and multinational companies of the US towards the immigrant labor force? 3) Is there a similarity of approach in both and a common ideology inderlying both? 4) How this phenomenon is connected to globalisation Methodology The methodology of this study will progress in two parts. One part of this study will be in the form of a qualitative analysis and comparison of major studies so far been done regarding the immigrant question in USA and the environment destruction and human right violations in USA caused by the activities of multinational corporations. The studies will be compared and correlated to find a viable link between these two aspects of the study question. This will be carried out by listing out 10 multinational corporations which have a history of environmental violations as well as human rights violations. Then this data will be analyzed to find out whether similarities in approach exist between them. The second part of the study will be based on deliberate sampling method and in the form of a detailed interview with an immigrant laborer who has been employed in a multinational company in US, since last 10 years. The working conditions and financial position of that person, what socio-political conditions prompted him to immigrate, the changes in environment and agriculture that happened in the last half-century in his native land and the causes, whether the company in which he is working is involved in any kind of environmental depletion, and how does he assess the socio-environmental issues involved in the functioning of his employer company etc. will be the issues based on which interview questions will be formulated. Data from both the first and second parts of the research will be correlated for similarities and common ideas. Analysis of Data The first step in qualitative data analysis has been described as “reading the interview transcripts, observational notes, or documents that are to be analyzed” (as cited by Maxwell, 96). In this study, the data analysis will begin by reading the major studies so far been conducted in this field, and then reading the interview transcript. Notes and memos will be prepared while reading both (Maxwell, 96). A connecting strategy through narrative analysis will be the path to proceed then (Maxwell, 96). The data will be reviewed to “pair up student perspectives with teacher perspectives” (Maxwell, 153). By comparing the results of secondary data analysis and also the interview, data validation will be carried out by way of triangulation (Maxwell, 153). Also, theoretical validation will be carried out by presenting the inferences before academic peer groups (Maxwell, 153). Conclusion The growth of capital in a globalized economy has an ideology of its own. It thrives on competition and military and financial power. The exploitation of less powerful countries in all respects is the only viable way of amassing disproportionate wealth for the big companies and MNCs in such an ambience. But a developed world which boasts of democracy and human rights has a responsibility to ensure that immigrant laborers are treated as equal human beings and that they are given the choice to remain in their own countries with access to their natural resources, with a healthy environment to live in. Hence, the discussion on immigrant labor problem has to be started afresh once again form the very root causes. The activities of foreign MNCs in the developing world have to be restrained and controlled strictly so that they do not impair the sustainable living of the populations there. The companies have to be made accountable for destroying the sustainable livelihoods of whole communities and societies rather than asking them to fulfill certain labor welfare standards or environmental standards. The corporate social responsibility has to be legally redefined by respective governments with this view in mind. Apart from carrying out activities which come under the concept of charity, the companies have to be compelled to incorporate the paradigm of sustainable development into their very planning process. Only if such measures are carried out, the so called developed world, spearheaded by the America, could rightfully claim that it has concern for human rights and democracy. References Blair, Jennifer and Ramsay, Harvie, “MNCs and Global Commodity Chains: Implications for Labor Strategies”, Multinational Companies and Global Human Resource Strategies, William.N.Cooke (ed.), Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. Blouet, Bryan.W. and Blouet, Olwyn.M., “Latin America and the Caribbean: A Systematic and Regional Survey”, London: John Wiley and Sons, 2009. Brysk, Alison, “Globalization and Human Rights”, California: University of California Press, 2002. Buell, Tonya, “Slavery in America: A Primary Source of the Intolerable”, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2004. Cullingworht, J.B. and Caves, Roger. W., Planning in the USA: Policies, Issues and Processes, New York: Taylor&Francis, 2008. Edmonston, Barry and National Research Council (US) Committee on Population, “Statistics on U.S. Immigration: An Assessment of Data Needs for Future Research”, Washington DC: National Academies Press, 1996. Feagin, Joe.R., “Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations”, London: Routledge, 2000. Findeis, Jill Leslie, “The dynamics of hired farm labour: constraints and community responses”, Oxfordshire: CABI, 2002. Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E. and Lombardo, Anthony. P., Reparations to Africa, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Lyles, Lionel.D. and Lyles, Essie Thibodeaux, “Historical Development of Capitalism in the United States and Its Affects on the American Family: From Colonial Times to 1920”, Bloomington: iUniverse, 2003. Maxwell, Joseph Alex, “Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach”, New Delhi: SAGE, 2005. Mclntyre, J.R., “Multinational Enterprises and the Challenges of Sustainable Development”, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009. Nader, Ralph, “The Case against "Free Trade": GATT, NAFTA, and the Globalization of Corporate Power”, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993. Parrenas, Rhacel, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Perl, Lila, “Immigration: This Land is Whose Land?”, Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Purcell, L.Edward, “Immigration”, Abingdon: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995. Robinson, William. I., “Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change and Globalization”, London: Verso, 2003. Sheppard, Eric and Barnes, Trevor. J., “A Companion to Economic Geography”, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. Simon, Julian. Lincoln, “Population matters: people, resources, environment, and immigration”, Transaction Publishers, 1996. Symcox, Geoffrey and Sullivan, Blair, "Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies", New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, “Industrialization, Environment and the Millennium Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa: The New Frontier in the Fight against Poverty”, Geneva: United Nations Publications, 2004. Wepman, Dennis, “Immigration”, New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Research Summary The question being addressed in this research is whether there is a correlation between exploitation of nature by multinational corporations and exploitation of labor force by the same. The attempt is to prove that both these kinds of exploitation are part of the same ideology, which is the explicit ideology of globalization as well. At present all the studies conducted in relation to this topic had been concentrating on only one aspect of these two alone. But it is very important to address the issue of environmental protection and human rights within a single frame work so that the MNCs who are the major players in this issue have to be made answerable for their total policy outlook rather than a single aspect of it. Through this approach one will be able to question the very developmental paradigm put forth by globalization rather than doing a fragmented criticism. And based on this critical frame work, one can understand the immigrant laborer problem of USA in a better perspective. Many researchers have studied this issue from many different angles, and concluded that multinational companies have been exploiting nature and human resources in the developing world in an unparalleled way. Not only nature, the people of those regions also become victims of that exploitation and looses their livelihood. They are forced to become immigrant laborers in the developed world, which is what happened to the Mexican immigrant laborers in USA. To find this connection between the issue of depletion of environment caused by MNCs and the immigrant laborer issue will be the new focus provided by this study. Narrative analysis will be the technique employed by this study to conduct qualitative analysis. A majority of studies conducted so far on this topic have been employing different qualitative and quantitative methods. But this study will employ a unique blend of two different methods of qualitative analysis, namely, secondary data analysis and interview method. Read More